MELINDA FINK Holocaust museum guide tells students:
‘Our generation failed. The next generation failed. Now it’s up to you … ’
By Earle Cornelius C
onner Lehman knew some- thing about the horror of the Holocaust. But he didn’t know
how horrible until his church group visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. “By the time I reached the second
floor and saw the video of bodies in trenches,” he said, “that’s when goose bumps went up my arms.” Goose bumps, of course, are far
less threatening than the sound of goose-stepping soldiers. And images of bodies stacked like cordwood can deliver a far more lasting impression than words from a book. Lehman, an eighth-grader, was
one of 33 youth and adults from St. Peter Lutheran Church, Lancaster, Pa., who visited the museum in November. Te trip was part of a class taught by Sister Dottie Almo- ney about how Christians, including many Lutherans, turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the Tird Reich. Almoney is St. Peter’s director of
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www.thelutheran.org
Christian education and outreach, a position she began aſter she and her husband, Joe, started working with youth at the church. A certification course at the Lutheran Teological Seminary at Gettysburg (Pa.) led to a career change. “I realized how much I didn’t
know,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was going to pull me in this direction.” Her master’s degree research
project at Lancaster [Pa.] Teologi- cal Seminary was “Anti-Semitism, the Underside of Christianity,” and it serves as the curriculum for the course.
Using Luther’s words Te Nazis used Martin Luther’s anti- Semitic words from his 1543 book On the Jews and Teir Lies to justify their actions. Almoney wanted stu- dents—and adults, many of whom were unaware of Luther’s anti- Semitic writings—to understand the church’s role in the Holocaust and how the Nazis co-opted his words.
Luther, she said, expected that
Jews would follow the apostle Paul’s lead and convert to Christianity. When they didn’t, he denounced them. “Be on your guard against the Jews,” he wrote. “Wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils.” Teir schools and synagogues,
he wrote, should be burned. Teir prayer books and Talmudic writings should “be taken from them.” “Tis,” Luther wrote, “is to be
done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians .... ” Following their trip to the
museum, Almoney asked class members: “What does that sound like?” “Kristallnacht,” replied senior
Jourdan Mitchell, referring to the night of broken glass in November 1938 when Nazis destroyed Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues. Jews, perhaps 100 or more, were murdered when German authori-
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